Posted on 05/27/2019 11:36:11 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
Some six months after the Great War of 1914-18 ended, Arthur Eddington travelled at the head of a team on a scientific expedition to the island of Principe off the coast of Equatorial Guinea in West Africa. He headed one of the two teams of astronomers assigned by a Joint Permanent Eclipse Committee of the Royal Society and the Royal Astronomical Society of Britain to observe and record photographically the full solar eclipse scheduled to take place on May 29, 1919.
At the time under Portuguese rule, Principe was selected as one of the two sites – the other was Sobral in the Brazilian Nordeste – from where the total solar eclipse and its full effect could be best observed. The expedition was proposed by Eddington, a rising star among British astronomers, to test Einstein’s general theory of relativity published in the middle of the Great War.
Eddington’s expedition to Principe a century ago tested and confirmed Einstein’s general theory of relativity as the single most outstanding scientific achievement in history by one individual. For more than two centuries Newton’s theory of gravitation, of space and time and motion, had stood as the definitive theory in explaining the mechanics of the universe, and had marked a paradigmatic shift in thinking that characterized the birth of the modern world as Newtonian.
Einstein’s theory when confirmed signified a revolution of even greater magnitude in scientific thinking than what Newton wrought with the publication of his Principia in 1687.
In 1916, Einstein published “The Foundation of the General Theory of Relativity” in the journal Annalen der Physik. Eddington was one of the very few individuals who grasped the implication of Einstein’s theory and was selected by Frank Dyson, the head of the Royal Astronomical Association, to witness and record the full solar eclipse
(Excerpt) Read more at americanthinker.com ...
Paul Johnson, the British historian, cites this as the day the modern age began in earnest.
He implies that the notion of relativity vis a vis spacetime was widely conflated with moral relativism and the world started down the slippery slope away from moral absolutes.
It is an interesting theory, one he supports further in Modern Times.
Me, I think everything started turning to crap after "Right-Turn-on-Red" legislation started showing up all over the USA in the 1970s.
It was the last of the era of self-control.
Licentiousness and chaos ensued.
Einstein’ theory was first proven correct when Einstein himself used it to calculate Mercury’s precession of perihelion. It had never been done successfully until then. Einstein said that it gave him heart palpitations.
Dang! I just used this to explain how a theory proven right confirms the theory with a leftist I know and used this example. Little did I know it was so apt!
So if I predicted that Avanati, Smollet, and Trump/Russia collusion were all hoaxes, does that prove my “Useful Idiots Supporting Leftist Bull” theory about the media is correct?
LOL. Good catch on Johnson, who is so brilliant about so many things.
“Me, I think everything started turning to crap after “Right-Turn-on-Red” legislation started showing up all over the USA in the 1970s.”
Why?
Great post, thanks.
Eddington had a hell of a time with getting his results.
It reminds me of a camera-carrying rocket that was sent above the atmosphere to do some star shooting back in the day. The film was ejected and captured as planned.
When the film was developed, it was revealed the camera aperture had been set for ASA 400 film, not the ASA 100 that was loaded. The underexposed B&W film was unusable and was given to an Army tech to do with as she chose.
She irradiated the film, making the metallic silver molecules radioactive. Then she contact-printed the negative using the radiation as the light source. Pulled out the job.
Clever girl.
“This is why in the shadow of the perfect theory, all the accompanying hoopla surrounding the theory of man-made global warming or climate change in our time fails to meet the criterion of testability, such as Eddington’s expedition put to test Einstein’s theory of general relativity and, hence, the so-called science of man-made global warming might well be described as voodoo-science.”
likewise the ridiculous Darwian evolution THEORY: voodoo-science as well ...
likewise the ridiculous Darwian evolution THEORY: voodoo-science as well ...
True information. Sadly, the author is probably in high school. “A rising star among British astronomers...” Lame writing.
Sir A. Eddington rode his bike every day, lived with his sister and proved that Einstein’s theory was correct. Eddington used the solar eclipse to prove that the sun’s gravity bends the light of starts just a little bit.
Eddington lived with other geniuses, such as Dirac, and always hoped that future geniuses would explain his obscure M theory. Never happened. Eddington’s M theory is still obscure. Even Stephen Hawking could not explain it.
Sir Eddington was a favorite Natural Philosopher among many physicists of his day.
True information. Sadly, the author is probably in high school. “A rising star among British astronomers...” Lame writing.
Sir A. Eddington rode his bike every day, lived with his sister and proved that Einstein’s theory was correct. Eddington used the solar eclipse to prove that the sun’s gravity bends the light of starts just a little bit.
Eddington lived with other geniuses, such as Dirac, and always hoped that future geniuses would explain his obscure M theory. Never happened. Eddington’s M theory is still obscure. Even Stephen Hawking could not explain it.
Sir Eddington was a favorite Natural Philosopher among many physicists of his day.
“used the solar eclipse to prove that the sun’s gravity bends the light of starts just a little bit.”
Wouldn’t a little bit of atmosphere around the sun bend the light of a star behind it?
Like the 5% background radiation (or whatever it is) it just doesn't disprove the theory.
What if those photons passing by the sun are affected by the photons coming out of the sun, or by other radiation from the sun, or its magnetic field; or whatever other stuff we have no clue about?
ML/NJ
I respectfully disagree. Please see my review of Johnson's History of the American People: He who does not add, subtracts.
ML/NJ
It’s also interesting how the speed of light was determined.
It involved timing of Jupiter’s moons coming around her when Jupiter is on this side of the sun with us as opposed to the timing when Jupiter is opposite the solar system from us.
The difference in the two times is how much longer the light waves took to arrive here when Jupiter was on the other side of the sun.
Science is a method, not a body of knowledge. This means there is no final, absolute proof for anything, because new information is always becoming available, not least because of improvements in technology made possible more recently than older experiments and observations. People who can't live with that are not actually interested in science.
” ... little bit of atmosphere around the sun ... “ ???!
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